Quotables

Quotables

July 19, 1992

LET IT SHINE. Alan Lupo, columnist with the Boston Globe:

In a nation of 40-watt bulbs, Mario Cuomo is a spotlight.

DISLIKING THE UNKNOWN. Anna Quindlen, columnist with The New York Times:

Here in New York and for the rest of this campaign we have the two faces of Eve. We have the women candidates, who are permitted - and I chose that word deliberately - to be ambitious, sure and strong. And then we have Hillary Clinton, who must hawk those cookies and show off her daughter to prove her bona fides. Bill Clinton married someone smart and opinionated, who could challenge him and apparently frequently does. That's not an easy thing for a man, but apparently it's even tougher for this nation. Talk to people who don't like her and they often say they have never heard her speak or seen her interviewed. It is the idea of her they dislike.

DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Donald Kaul, syndicated columnist:

Democrats, and particularly liberal Democrats, are a contentious lot. I sometimes think they actually prefer losing presidential elections because being out of office makes it easier to retain one's purity of purpose.

STALKING HORSE. Thomas Oliphant, columnist with the Boston Globe:

To the limited extent Bill Clinton's campaign is assembled, an operating assumption has been that a three-man race would hold into October, becoming a two-man sprint only near the end as one of the three finally fades.

Were Ross Perot to go belly up sooner, the fear is that George Bush would regain Southern and Western clout via Perot's GOP-oriented, Sun Belt suburbanites, forcing Clinton to play defense in the big industrial states.

The fact that Clinton needs Perot has never been more clear.

LOOSE-LOOSE SITUATION. Sydney H. Schanberg, columnist with Newsday:

American politicians are still trying to erase Vietnam from their memories. Our political mythology imbues us with the idiocy of ``We're No. 1!'' so we aren't very good at handling defeats in war - and no good at all at learning something from them.

NOT AN IDEAL MATCH. William McGurn, Washington bureau chief of the National Review:

Bill and Hillary Clinton embody values that will likely cost Democrats the presidency well into the 21st century. He is a governor who favors removing restrictions that would keep daughter Chelsea out of combat but bent all the rules to keep himself safe in Oxford rather than serve in Vietnam. She is a Yale law grad and apparently not a Tammy Wynette fan, for whom progress means a legal system where kids might sue Mom and Dad.

It's silly to think teaching youngsters made-up names for body parts or telling them nothing somehow prevents experimentation, pregnancy or disease. But last year's more than 1 million teenage pregnancies and 400,000 teen-age births - nearly 60 percent to unmarried adolescents - are evidence that ignorance is not working.